In the water, neither awake nor asleep, I drifted through memories not my own.
I was a boy in richly woven clothes, standing in a wood. There were others with me. We turned through the trees with no path, our voices raised to the treetops, each person uttering their own beseech.
“Grant me health, Spirit.”
“Bless me with good harvest.”
“I will take Larch as my namesake for a blessing, great Spirit of the Wood.”
Salt filled my nose, tickling it. I found a gnarled tree away from the crowd and put my hand on it. Pain touched my arms. When I looked down, my veins were black as ink.
I closed my eyes, magic all around me—in me. A hundred voices filled my ears. Not human voices, but another chorus. One of discord, yet harmony, that spoke almost always in rhyming words. It was my magic, my gift, to hear them. I’d been born with the fever.
I could always talk to the trees.
Your name-tree is cunning, they said, its shadow unknown. It bends without breaking, though only half-grown. The Prince becomes King, and the King takes the throne. Will you come to the wood when Blunder’s your own?
“I will,” I whispered.
What blessing do you ask, young Taxus?
“For the Spirit of the Wood to help me make Blunder a kingdom of abundance—of magic. That she might give me the tools I need to shepherd the land and its people.”
The tree groaned beneath my hand, branches moving of their own accord until they all pointed west. The next tree did the same, and the one after it. On and on, they pointed me home.
When I reached the cusp of the meadow outside my father’s castle, I waited. Then, near the seedling tree I’d planted on my seventh nameday, something materialized in front of me.
A stone, as tall and wide as a table. Upon it was a sword. It caught the midday light, shining like a beacon. Carved intricately upon the hilt was an image.
A shepherd’s staff.
